May 29, 2012

[H]e said the people have all taken their clothing off, been extremely violent with what seemed to be super-human strength, even using their jaws as weapons....

In many of the cases, [emergency room Dr. Paul] Adams said the person’s temperature has risen to an extremely high level, they’ve become very aggressive, with logic and the ability to feel pain lost in their reactions. Some have used their jaws as a weapon during attacks.

Dr. Adams said the patients were in a state of delirium.

“Extremely strong, I took care of a 150 pound individual who you would have thought he was 250 pounds,” Dr. Adams said. “It took six security officers to restrain the individual.”

There were scare stories about marijuana and LSD too. "Bath salts" have been around for a while and we are just hearing about how they turn people into crazed zombies...it couldn't have anything to do with Senator Schumer's bill banning the drugs, could it?

any drug that raises your body temperature perilously and makes you crazy and super strong should probably be illegal.

Perhaps so. Maybe this will be the first time in history when the "ZOMG, the drug makes you super-strong and crazy" claim actually holds water, even though it didn't for alcohol, pot, LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, PCP, or meth.

This is simply darwanism at work. I wouldn't read anything more into it than that. Intellectually, perhaps, the guy could have been contained by the horrified cop, watching a person eat, among other things, another man's eye, but the physics of the situation probably overcame some internal intellectual argument about what possibilities were available.

Wow. On one end of the spectrum you've got people insisting on perfectly organic vegetables. At the other, these fools who take adulterated cleaning products and industrial chemicals to get high. Sheesh!

I start with skepticism that there is a new super-evil drug that makes people eat other people, according to a Law Enforcement Person of Authority dressed in a splendid uniform .....who tells us we need more laws and more Heroes of Law Enforcement to save us all.

Meanwhile, Al Sharpton ponders....it WAS another unarmed black man that was shot in Florida. Was he shot by a "white hispanic" cop? Were there civil rights related to the black cannibal that were violated? Is there money to be made jetting down and appearing with the bereaved cannibal's mother and family spokesman/NAACP member/minister?

There is a photo of the victim online now. I made the mistake of viewing it. The man has no face whatsoever. Probably the most devastating injury I have ever seen with a living person. I don't see how he can recover.

Turns out it was suicide by bath salts zombie. When asked, the dying man's last words were to explain himself, he lifted his own head up and spitting through his torn apart mouth and bleeding tongue, and with great difficulty managing his esses he said, " the cocaine psychosis cannibal wanted an arm and a leg," and then he dropped dead.

The only logical answer is to ban both baths and salts, the whole lot of them.

Unless, you evil bastard, hating children and wishing them harm is just what you do.

Drug pusher.

Either way, unless you are soft on crime and criminals, because you are one one supposes with, in many cases, some cause, we must decide the Buckley question after all:

Kill the drug users or allow a level of drug use which is then monitored or controlled to some extent -- which is always of course going to be lacking in many areas but which has proven better than many alternatives?

Or something like that.

Hell, you go to https://cumulus.hillsdale.edu/Buckley/ and start trying to paraphrase the man. Even done poorly it's harder than one imagines in many cases as the substantive points built flawlessly abound to the point of overwhelmtion

"even though it didn't for alcohol, pot, LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, PCP, or meth."

Have you ever seen a PCP or meth user on a high ? Ecstasy causes permanent brain damage with chronic use. cocaine makes people hyperactive and paranoid, a bad combination. They also have a lot of sudden death. Alcohol and pot are low on my scale of hazards. The "purple drank" that Trayvon was using also causes permanent brain injury.

When I was a senior in medical school, 1965, the Dean asked to meet with me (I was student body pres.) . He told me that about half the sophomore class were on LSD. They had medical students crawling around in the dorm barking like dogs. One of the kids explained his flashbacks to the Dean. Some of them never finished medical school and others never did an internship and got licensed. I knew a lot of them. It was the peak of the 60s nuttiness. We don't need the latest version.

In the case of these types of stories, the word "predisposition[s]" always jumps to mind.

I'll buy that, and I'll participate. I wonder if Eugene is an Islander of some sort, perhaps Haitian. I haven't seen anything about that in the stories I've read so far. If Haitian, perhaps he got his Haitian Zombie Lore confused with his American Movie Zombie Lore. Cross-cultural polination isn't always a good thing!

When I was a senior in medical school, 1965, the Dean asked to meet with me (I was student body pres.) . He told me that about half the sophomore class were on LSD. They had medical students crawling around in the dorm barking like dogs

To sum up: in 1965, the drug about which authority figures told implausible and poorly-sourced stories was LSD. Today, it is "bath salts". Who knows what it'll be tomorrow?

I'm curious what your reason is for considering alcohol a minor threat, though, considering that (a) it kills more people than all the illegal drugs combined and (b) it causes:

And so on. You can tell a horror story about almost anything if you focus solely on the worst effects on the worst abusers.

My point isn't that "insert scary drug of the moment here" is harmless, but that self-interested authority figures have been peddling bullshit about them for generations. The old "this drug makes people super strong and crazy" line is one of the classics. Expect follow-up about how it is "even worse than [insert previous scary drug here" and is a massive contributor to everything about the underclass that the middle class doesn't like. :)

I doubt if either of these guys cared one bit if this was legal or not. I doubt if making it illegal would do anything to make either of those guys care if it was legal or not. Making drugs illegal doesn't seem to have kept them off our streets or kept idiots from trying to get high.

I merely suggest that a local government could make an intelligent law against selling or using the product that this person used.

Yes, I understood that.

I'm just pointing out, again, that (a) we don't know he was on anything at all, let alone "bath salts" and (b) fashioning an "intelligent law" banning a specific form of commerce without causing unforeseen and unwanted side effects is easier said than done. And by "easier said than done" I mean "frequently said, seldom if ever done".

Look at the host of laws and regulations aimed at tightening up access to meth precursors. The only effect has been to make it harder for non-druggies to get medicine.

Making drugs illegal doesn't seem to have kept them off our streets or kept idiots from trying to get high.

This notion is commonly thrown around and it's just atrociously wrong. You assume that all the idiots of the world who want drugs can get them. This assumption is invalid. The world is filled with idiots. If it was also filled with drugs, think about how many more idiots would consume drugs.

Whenever this sentiment overtakes you, as it apparently does a lot of people, just envision something like ExxonMobil Cocaine Corporation. Because that's what you would have.

The key, as with anything, isn't legalization. It's exactly what to make illegal and what to regulate, and how.

Look at the host of laws and regulations aimed at tightening up access to meth precursors.

Those laws are tremendously stupid. But just because we some stupid laws doesn't mean that laws are stupid. We also have some really good laws.

Reason was great for me when I was 20. I would consume every available back issue at the library. But I see it as too often trite now. Yes, it's good to expose bad law and be wary of more bad law. But some of that energy would be much better spent trying to create good law.

It's a fool's errand to try to make an ever-spiraling list of substances "illegal". Look at a list of phenethylamines, some with only a simple alteration of an atom or group here or there in the molecule, yet with sometimes completely different effects, from decongestants to psychoactive agents to anti-Parkinson drugs to stimulants to antidepressants. every rearrangement fresh fodder for more and more ineffective laws and regulations, laws and regulations that hurt no one except "legitimate" users.

Palladian -- I think your argument is no good. There's probably a name for it, but what you are doing is taking a heinous, awful law and then generalizing that other, perfectly reasonable laws are bad because they fall into the same category as the bad law. Your argument is like saying that we should strike all traffic laws because the speed limit on empty stretches of highway is too slow.

Obviously, it is absurd to make Sudafed -- or whatever -- so hard to buy. That's a dumb law. But it's not a dumb law to make illegal the cooking and processing of stuff to make meth, or to make the sale of meth illegal.

I am with everyone who wants to rethink the drug laws. Could we have, for example, highly regulated LSD and mushroom markets? Yes. Marijuana markets? Yes. It brings up a host of terrible externalities, such as driving, but it's doable. How about cocaine and meth and other drugs that are very addictive? That's much more problematic.

The problem with live and let live is that people's lives get all fucked up. The other problem is that people should be able to organize their societies however they want within very, very wide limits -- but that problem cuts both ways on the authoritarian-vs.-libertarian scale.

Those laws are tremendously stupid. But just because we some stupid laws doesn't mean that laws are stupid. We also have some really good laws.

Well, sure. For example, laws against murder, theft, rape, etc.

We have no good laws aimed at curtailing mutually consensual economic activity. Governments have been trying to figure out how to regulate human nature for as long as there have *been* governments, but no luck so far. :)

We have no good laws aimed at curtailing mutually consensual economic activity.

Let's look at crack cocaine. It's a product that gives you a very nice rush for about 20 minutes -- with diminishing returns on repeated use -- and is also obscenely addictive and absolutely ruins peoples' lives. Or let's take heroin. It's a similar product except the feeling you get is apparently the best possible feeling in the world and it's even more addictive and it will kill you.

I am radically for the prohibition of these products in society. The thing that libertarians lose sight of in the world is the fact that the decisions of individuals have a macro effect on the fabric of society.

The other issue, that I harp on, is that people in free societies are free to organize their societies. Organization matters. Aesthetics matter. Society matters. What's around even the most hardened libertarian matters. If most people don't want to live with a bunch of crackheads, why should they?

There's probably a name for it, but what you are doing is taking a heinous, awful law and then generalizing that other, perfectly reasonable laws are bad because they fall into the same category as the bad law.

Well, no.

What he's doing is taking a law we were all assured was perfectly reasonable and necessary, and pointing out that it turned out to be heinous and awful.

He isn't comparing it to your law, because you aren't proposing one. You're proposing that the government should Do Something, because clearly Something can and should be done. Ah, the audacity of hope!

What he's doing is taking a law we were all assured was perfectly reasonable and necessary

Assured my whom? The crappy legislators who made the bad law? Then change the law. But, in order to do that, you have to craft a better law. I'm sure the libertarians will get right on that. And I'm sure they'll do the same bang-up job that the communists did.

I really don't know how else to deal with crack cocaine but to make the sale and distribution illegal. It's the worst product ever.

What happens if it's legal? The price will come down, I guess. Better packaging and savvier marketing. A chance for the trial lawyers to get rich. What else? Do you foresee less death and economic destruction? It's difficult to imagine.

So one group proposes to ban every product that can be used by anyone(because if it's there someone will figure out how to get a high off of it), and the other side proposes no laws at all, because see above.

Did anyone ever think to test that chimpanzee last year to see if he had ingested bath salts? Maybe he ate that womans face because he couldn't get bath salts?

Maybe, just maybe, you can't regulate all behavior, and have to live with a certain amount of risk in a free society?

Maybe, we should teach morality in our schools so idiot kids didn't think it was cool to shoot up heroin, or huff paint, or any of the societal ills afflicting America today. Naaaww! That's crazy!

Rev wrote: "Maybe this will be the first time in history when the "ZOMG, the drug makes you super-strong and crazy" claim actually holds water, even though it didn't for alcohol, pot, LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, PCP, or meth."

I think it would take about two generations of observation for society to internalize it's not good to do the really hard drugs. I think it was Heinlein who said legalizing drugs would be would yield natural selection.

"You assume that all the idiots of the world who want drugs can get them. This assumption is invalid."

I don't know where a person would go to not be able to get illegal drugs. Certainly there were "druggies" at my tiny rural high school, though I suppose it was mostly pot. Everyone talked about "acid." My sister called the cops when she was an apartment manager to tell them one of her tenets was dealing Meth and was told that there "was no meth" in that city. And anyone can get glue or whatever (skittles and ice tea?) and there are always deaths from alcohol, either poisoning or drunk driving.

If there isn't some of the "harder" drugs, is it because people can't *get* it, or because the population is so sparse that there isn't enough demand?

Really All anyone cares about is this stupid drug either your all for it, or your against it, what about the poor guy who's face was eaten. I don't see why people wast their time on drugs oh wait it's america all we care about is sitting on our butts, getting high or drunk and whats that last one oh wait it's getting everything handed to us. This man did nothing to deserve his fate do you guys really have no compassion, LSD is this and Bath Salts are that. How would you really feel about them if this had happened to your child or husband or mother?